


The Cure for Loneliness

by drygin



Series: Birchcaster [5]
Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, I just want good things for Nancy Birch, Loneliness, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), Touch-Starved, but first she has to Suffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:55:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23212111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drygin/pseuds/drygin
Summary: Bonny steadies Nancy by the arm and lays a gloved hand on the side of her face, swiping a thumb past her cheekbone. Her touch leaves behind a blazing trail of heat, her voice feverishly warm against the shell of Nancy’s ear. “Let’s see," she says, a coy smirk quirking her mouth. "Lucky you don’t bruise easily.”And it’s too much, the warmth that emanates from Bonny’s touch. Nancy has to stave it somehow.
Relationships: Nancy Birch/Bonny Lancaster
Series: Birchcaster [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805314
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	The Cure for Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> Please see below for a quick explanation of this story's plot/placement on the Harlots timeline. Thanks for reading, folks!

_**WHOO** — time for some backstory and context for this fic. Strap in, folks! This story takes place shortly after the start of the relationship between everybody's favourite flagellation mistress, Nancy Birch, and Bonny Lancaster, a navy woman whose boastfulness and quick wit has won over Nancy's brooding heart. Suffice to say, their relationship experiences many ups and downs due to their conflictive personalities and lives. Bonny serves as Quartermaster on a ship that for a time is docked in Eddings, a country town a considerable distance away from Soho, under the employ of Captain Marius. Spoiler alert, he's not a real Navy Captain. He's a crook, a very bad redheaded crook who's wanted for a plethora of crimes Bonny eventually finds out about and is subsequently horrified by. Cue betrayal. Cue injured Bonny. Cue sad Nancy. On the Harlots' timeline, I'd say this story takes place sometime before the events of season one. I hope to write more of their tales together, but I decided to start here — smack dab in the heated middle of their complicated love._

Bonny smells like the spray of the sea, of saltwater wrung out from rope on board _The Admiral_ where she serves as Quartermaster. Cedarwood, from the sawmill she walks past on her way through town (the one with a name Nancy can never remember), picking up tools to deliver to the ship’s carpenter. Her scent occupies each room inside the house, and it will linger for months in her absence, filling Nancy’s head with fitful dreams.

It sates her loneliness, but it also sours her yearning into something painful like a knife — twisting every time she shoulders open her front door to that tantalising essence snaking through the house. Inadvertently, she expects to be greeted by that smirking she-devil, leant against the wall or lying asleep with her boots swinging off her own bed, only to find the house empty.

January dribbles from the lip of a gin bottle and February is cut thinly into slices with a knife, scraped across holey chunks of bread. March burns her fingertips. She smears the tip of that month underneath her eyes, as charcoal black as the sky looming outside. People come and go. In other’s company, she drinks, cackles, and flays, but at night, the silence in her house is maddening.

She tries putting ink to paper, but by the time her quill has scratched the shaky “ ** _B_** ” of Bonny’s name, her throat spasms and her mind closes itself of everything she wants to say. She screws up the unfinished letter, hurls the ink pot at the wall, and sleeps outside her bedroom with her jacket pulled tightly around her shoulders to escape from the scent lingering on the bedsheets.

Bonny arrives at Nancy’s doorstep drenched in rain, her soaked shirt stuck to her skin. The knees of her pants are stained with mud and her tricorn hat is as full of water as a pail. The flash of her lopsided grin stuns Nancy and she stands stock-still as Bonny grasps her in a tight embrace, flooding her with the warmth she has been insatiable for these past few months. It happens fast, too quickly, and Nancy recoils like she has touched a hot stove.

“Did I startle you?” Bonny asks, breathless.

Nancy stumbles backwards, overwhelmed by the cloying, spicy tang of Bonny’s skin. “Are you _mad_?”

“A storm impeded my travels.” A laugh bursts from Bonny’s throat as she peels off her water-logged navy frock coat hung on her shoulder like a heavy cape. Stepping inside the house, she gestures to the scraps over a plate left on the table from a previous meal. Nancy nods, dropping into a chair, and watches Bonny scarfing down the dry pieces of cheese topped on bread.

After the first few mouthfuls, she utters a satisfied noise in the back of her throat, possessed by a ravenous hunger. Nothing about Bonny has changed since the last time Nancy saw her in mid-December, when they had lain together beside the hearth, their bodies washed over by orange flames. Nancy’s demeanour is sullen, her eyes sunken and face pale. If anything, Bonny is brighter now. Her voice brims with liveliness.

“These visits must drain your purse,” Nancy murmurs.

“Not this time,” Bonny retorts, shaking her head. “Like I said, the coach I took from Eddings was nearly carried away by a storm. So, I got off and walked the stretch of countryside between the town and London on foot. A farmer took pity on me, let me sleep on the back of his cart. He was headed the same way.”

Nancy’s eyebrow perks. “He wanted nothing in return?”

“Only good company,” Bonny replies. “Poor fool. He must be lonely, going up and down that path all day.”

A muscle twitches in Nancy’s jaw at the sympathetic tone of Bonny’s voice. She purses her lips together, standing up and pushing in her chair so the furniture’s wooden legs squeal loudly on the floor. “That was reckless of you, all the same,” she chides Bonny, eyes narrowing at her wind-mussed hair. “You look as though you’ve been sleeping in a barn. Is that ink, flecked under your ear?”

“I was helping Marius with the navigational charts. Settled a fight on deck two days ago,” Bonny smirks, leaning her chin against the interlocked fingers of both of her hands. She nods to the birch rod leant against the wall nearby. “How has your business been treating you?”

“Acceptably enough,” she answers curtly. In truth, Nancy recalls neither the face nor name of her last patron. She has only provided her birching arm to as many men as necessary to pay for the house’s rent.

“Before I forget,” Bonny says, breaking Nancy out of her thoughts about the stink of men’s sweat, the hoarseness of their breath, and the nightmares she woke from to find herself snared in her bedsheets. “I brought you a gift!” She rifles through the satchel slung over her shoulder, retrieving something colourful and round that Nancy hardly glimpses from the corner of her eye before it bounces off her forehead.

 _“Bonny_ _!”_ she exclaims, bending over the table. She clutches a hand over her brow and grimaces with an unamused hiss, hearing whatever has been thrown at her roll underneath the table.

Bonny stands up from her chair, rushing towards Nancy with a scoff of disbelief. “I thought you would catch it! Honestly, Nancy.” She steadies her by the arm and lays a gloved hand on the side of her face, swiping a thumb past her cheekbone. Her touch leaves behind a blazing trail of heat, her voice feverishly warm against the shell of Nancy’s ear. “Let’s see. Lucky you don’t bruise easily.”

And it’s too much, the warmth that emanates from Bonny’s touch. Nancy has to stave it somehow, nearly gasping in relief when Bonny ducks underneath the table to retrieve what she threw earlier. “And, lucky for us, neither do these.” She stands back up, presenting the piece of fruit — a ripe orange — to Nancy with a sly grin across her face.

“How soon must you return? To your Captain and your ship?”

Bonny flinches at the abrupt question, her fingers slipping from the sleeve of Nancy’s jacket. She laughs belatedly, a forced and bitter noise.

“Well, let’s not dampen the mood!”

“There are things I have to do, errands to run,” Nancy lies through her teeth, averting her eyes from Bonny. “You can’t expect me to put everything aside for you.”

She doesn’t want to savour the sting that ripples across Bonny’s face, causing the other woman’s hands to clench as though she is recovering from a blow.

“Of course not,” Bonny murmurs softly, taking a bottle of gin from the mantle. Shaking herself back into sorts, she begins to pour two glasses. For today’s special occasion, Nancy supposes, although she hardly drinks gin on special occasions anymore. Every day of the week, rather. “What is it you have to do? I’ll join you; we can make fun out of dirty work.”

Bonny holds out one of the glasses, but Nancy shakes her head. “You must be tired after such a long journey. You should rest.” She brushes Bonny’s hand aside, attempting to sidle past her, but takes less than three steps towards the door before her wrist is grabbed a hold of. The breath that slinks past her ear is feverishly hot.

“I travelled all this way to see you.”

Nancy pivots on her heel. She seizes the glass Bonny is clutching in her other hand, flinging it at the wall where the glass shatters into pieces.

“And I have waited, _all this time!_ ”

Bonny recoils at the unadulterated fury in Nancy’s voice, stepping back. Her hand flies to the sword sheathed on her waist, but then she must realise how stupid it looks of her being about to draw a naval weapon on a woman shorter than her by several inches, and she removes her palm from the golden pommel.

“You’re like a ghost, Bonny,” Nancy continues. “You disappear as quickly as you come, and I’m always the one who’s left to get by with the emptiness you’ve left behind! Every time you leave, it feels like I’m mourning you. And then after I’m convinced you won’t come back, when I’ve begun to feel myself again, to feel _alive_ again, you return,” Nancy’s voice trembles. In a hoarse voice, she whispers, “It’s exhausting, and I’m sick of it.”

For a long while, the air between them is filled with the harsh breathing of Nancy as she catches her breath. Bonny seems at a loss for what to say, but then her brow furrows. What was at first confusion in her eyes twists into something far viler, a malevolent anger. “When you’ve begun to feel _‘alive’_ again?” she repeats. “Do you think you’re the only one who suffers? That your loneliness is one-sided, reserved to you, at all?”

Bonny mutters something under her breath, running a hand through her hair. She snatches her coat back from where it’s been folded over a chair in front of the fireplace, still dripping wet, plunging her arms through the sleeves. “Are you the only one of us who’s capable of feeling, is that it?”

Nancy flounders for how to respond, grasping Bonny’s arm before she turns away. “Don’t be careless. You never listen —”

“I’ve heard you well enough,” Bonny snaps back. She tears her arm out of Nancy’s grip. “If a phantom’s truly what you think of me, I suppose I’ll do what phantoms do best. I wouldn’t want to outstay my welcome.”

“Bonny!” Nancy calls out, but she is unable to stop the other woman before she strides through the doorway out onto the street. Nancy hurries towards the doorframe, but by the time she reaches it, the other woman has already been absorbed by a passing crowd. If Bonny calls anything out to her, her voice is drowned out by the gravel crunching underneath the boots of others walking past the house.

**~~O~~**

For three months, Bonny goes unheard of. It isn’t something Nancy is unused to, the loneliness and lack of correspondence. The cycle of gin, tobacco, and silence in the house repeats itself until she recuperates. Life carries on, each day crawling by for Nancy like a slowly turning wheel. And then, unexpectedly, she flourishes — the air inside her bedroom in the house no longer syrup-thick to breathe.

She offers lodgings to one Violet Cross and gives out bread and board to those in need. Young, bruised girls on the streets who remind Nancy of herself at a young age, dropped into the world with hardly any knowledge of its workings. It’s soothing to know she has at least provided some comfort or even rescued those who otherwise would have been left to starve in the gutter.

Betsey Fletcher arrives across her doorstep next, Nancy taking a shine to the blue-eyed, seemingly angelic girl who carries a dark wit about her.

The three of them make a lively group. They cackle at each other’s jokes shared over dinner, and the girls never ask questions about the tricorn hat Nancy keeps tucked under her arm. At outrageous hours of the night, they peer around the curtain separating their rooms from the main room of the house to find Nancy sitting in front of the fireplace, taking slow sips from the bottle of gin in her hand.

When they think Nancy can’t hear them, her chin leant against her fist at the table with her eyes closed the next day, Violet and Betsey exchange stories of a long-lost husband away at sea, dashing with broad shoulders and a sharp-cut face. Nancy smirks to herself while listening to their tales, half-amused. They aren’t far from the truth.

News of Bonny comes in the form of a letter, muddied and torn from being carried such a long distance across the countryside. It’s by sheer luck Nancy doesn’t throw it out. Had she been the one to discover it first, she would have thought the letter misdelivered, slid under the door by someone mistaking her house for someone else’s.

Instead, it’s Violet who plucks the letter from the floor early one morning. Nancy is occupied with one of her regular patrons in the narrow space beside the corridor. Violet pushes through the curtain hung over the doorway, wild curls flowing down her shoulders.

 _“Nancy!_ Letter for you.”

Betsey follows closely behind, her head bobbing behind Violet’s shoulder. She has a catty smirk across her face, drawn to the scene out of curiosity. Not just to hear what the letter is about, but the opportunity to see Nancy at work, which she doesn’t usually allow. Nancy values her privacy, especially while wielding her birch above her head. “Why’s his head stuck in a bucket?”

“Who’s it from?” Nancy ignores her, jerking her head towards the envelope in Violet’s hand. She doesn’t mean to sound impatient, but she has been interrupted out of earning coin that will be spent on their dinner. She gives the man in front of her a firm kick to emphasise her displeasure, hearing him groan.

“I’ve got no idea,” Violet replies, turning the envelope to one side to try and make out the scrawl written across it. “That’s men’s writing if I ever saw it. I can’t read this, Nancy.”

“Give it here!” Betsy chirps from behind her, snatching the envelope. She twists the ball of her foot on the floor, mouthing the hastily written words scratched by a dry quill. “Do you know a town called Eddings, Nancy?”

~~**O** ~~

The next time Nancy sees Bonny, the navy-woman’s skin is drained of colour. Her lips are blue, cracked and bleeding, and her face is hollow. Her body and clothes stink pungently of salt. Instead of smelling like the open air across the sea, Bonny reeks of its merciless depths.

Even wrapped in layers upon layers of thick blankets, woollen shawls, and whatever could be used for warmth that Bonny’s companions had on hand isn’t enough to cloister the scent. She is half-drowned, half-dead. The smell of salt will linger on her skin after a thousand washes.

They are caring for her at a tavern in Eddings, hidden away inside an upstairs room. Nancy arrives in the town, exhausted from the journey. She stumbles through the cobbled streets and roads in accordance to the map enclosed in the letter she received days earlier. Dazed, and on an empty stomach, on account of her having to demand the carriage driver taking her through London to stop every ten minutes or so to stagger out and vomit in a crevice of the road before they reached the countryside.

She can’t cope with carriages. Being trapped inside of one reminds her of another stifling ride taken years ago when she was a small child. She had sat wedged between the carriage wall and the lap of a woman in a powdered wig who bound her in a crushingly tight dress and schooled her on how to act in front of gentry once they arrived at Golden Square.

Worse than her travel sickness, the scribbled explanation of events she grasps in her gloved hand, and perhaps even more so than Bonny’s condition is the fact Nancy has to face. She can’t stay in Eddings, not with Bonny. She has left Violet to watch the house on Russell Street, but she and Betsey can’t earn enough to pay the rent alone.

She would have to return in three days’ time. Whether or not Bonny would wake up in that period relied on luck, and whether she’d be lucid when she did, a miracle itself.

A young man in a raggedy brown coat meets Nancy outside of the tavern, introducing himself as Hamish. She wants to pinch him around the ear and demean his abhorrent penmanship, but she can see his red-rimmed eyes and how he sways, exhausted on his feet.

He glares at Nancy as he leads her through the empty tavern. Inside, the chairs around the tables are stacked upside-down, the curtains of the windows drawn closed, and the bar across the room deserted. The tavern seems to have been closed for quite some time.

“She mumbles for you in her sleep.” Hamish clutches the wooden railing of the stairs beside the bar so tightly his knuckles whiten, dragging himself up the steps towards a small, knee-height door. “I don’t know you, and I don’t think you’ll be good for Bonny.”

Crawling through the narrow entryway, Nancy starts at the sight of a silver-haired woman perched across the sill of a boarded window in the attic. Her eyes flick to Nancy, noting her unusual garb, and then to Hamish. “You found her, then.”

“What happened?” Nancy asks.

Hamish tells her about Marius, a name she is familiar with. Bonny had always spoken so highly of her Captain, sharing the story with Nancy of how he rescued her years ago when she and her previous crew had their ship preyed upon by Spanish raiders. Once Bonny was nursed back to health, and seeing her potential as a navigator, Marius offered her a place in his own naval crew aboard _The Admiral_ to serve under him as her Captain. He is a man Bonny considers a father, teacher, and leader.

“Marius has been impersonating a navy Captain for years. His manners, his ship, his medals — all of it was a front to hide stolen goods in plain sight,” Hamish explains, handing Nancy a slip of paper printed with a red-headed man’s unshaven face and list of charges her eyes bulge at. “He stole another man’s name and uniform, likely murdered him. His crew are all in on his game, thieves, murderers, and liars posing as lawful men.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“We did,” the silver-haired woman cuts in. “She went after him anyway. Thought she of all people could talk some sense into him. As soon as he realised Bonny knew the truth, he had her locked in one of the ship’s cabins. Planned to set sail to another country where he could lie low and keep Bonny quiet, but then he changed his mind and let her go.”

“By throwing her off the ship, half a mile across the ocean,” Hamish interjects flatly. “I’d say Marius will stay at sea for a good while where he can pillage as many foreign ships as he pleases under the guise of justice and keep all that he steals.”

“Have you told the law?” Nancy demands.

Hamish shakes his head. “Bonny made us swear not to.”

“Do you think her verdict on his soul matters? She doesn’t know what she needs!”

“I’m sorry, but who put you in charge here? All you’ve done since you walked through the door is criticise us. You weren’t there when they carried her in. I thought she was dead. She swam back, did you know that? Dragged herself ashore. _Where were you?”_ Hamish scowls, stepping forwards to crowd her against the wall.

Nancy’s grip tightens around her birch. She twists her hand, drilling heat into the palm of her leather glove. If need be, she will strike him, and she’s already fighting the urge.

“Hamish,” the woman by the window snaps. “Lay off.”

“Where is she?” Nancy hisses.

Hamish jerks an elbow towards the mass of blankets propped on a bed on the other side of the attic. Its wooden frame groans as the figure lying on it turns over in their sleep. As Nancy approaches the bed, a string of unintelligible syllables drifts through the air, and she could collapse in relief at the sound of Bonny’s voice. Weak and rough, but always recognisable. She could never mistake that voice for anyone else’s.

Her first impulse is to run her fingers through Bonny’s black hair, almost to make sure she’s really there. Nancy marvels at how quickly it has grown out in the several months they’ve spent apart. It’s not at all close to reaching her shoulders yet, but the soft strands of her hair nearly exceed the length of Nancy’s fingers.

Bonny shivers violently, startling Nancy from her thoughts. With her other hand, she peels back several of the blankets Bonny’s wrapped in, folding them below her collarbone to reveal the sopping-wet shirt she is wearing. Nancy recognises the striking colours of her navy coat, also dripping with seawater.

“How long has she been wearing these clothes?”

“Since she was brought here,” Hamish answers tersely. Guilt flashes through his eyes, and he averts his gaze from hers.

Nancy rounds furiously on them both, taken aback. She throws an arm out to Bonny. “You fools, she’ll freeze to death!”

“I’ve been more focused on making sure she has a roof over her head!” Hamish snarls. “This room is meant for paying customers, which means I either have to pay the rent myself or forge the numbers in the books. I may run this place, but I don’t own it! If it’s found out what I’m doing, I’ll be done for forgery, and Bonny will be thrown out on the streets and left to starve to death!”

“You still could’ve dressed her warm.”

“Whelma isn’t strong enough to lift her up herself, and I…” Hamish’s eyes narrow and he shakes his head, abashed. “I’m not comfortable with it. I’m not sure she’d be, either.”

“I’m sure her modesty outweighs her life in importance,” Nancy growls at him, glowering sourly. “I’ll do it.”

“I have a fresh set of clothes laid out.” Whelma motions to a bundle in the corner of the attic. As she and Hamish step past Nancy to leave, she gives her shoulder a tight squeeze. “Call us if you need, pet.”

Even after the attic door shuts behind them, Nancy can make out the sounds of Hamish and Whelma arguing outside. She does her best to ignore them, focusing instead on the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of Bonny’s chest beneath the blankets wound around her. Unravelling them from her, let alone dressing her in warm dry clothes is difficult enough. Bonny breathes, moans, and slurs odd mispronunciations of words Nancy tries but fails to make sense of.

“I know. I know, hush.” Nancy pries Bonny’s fingers from the blankets, rubbing her hands to try and summon the warmth back into her body. Bonny leans heavily against Nancy, her head drooped against the other woman’s shoulder. The regularly tall Bonny who strides through doorways seems so small, bent forwards like she is. Nancy presses her forehead to the crown of Bonny’s head. “Open your eyes, please,” she whispers, waiting for a response. “I’ll do anything you say.”


End file.
